"I don't want your thanks," she returned quickly. "Were you looking for thanks last fall for taking care of my brother? He thinks you saved his life."
Dexter glanced up sharply as she admitted her relationship with the boy in the cabin across the valley. But he made no comment. "It's the business of the police to render services when needed," he said lightly.
Alison had turned aside to stoop over her cooking fire. She lifted the lid from the simmering bucket, dipped in a tin cup, and offered her companion a steaming drink. "Rabbit broth," she said. "I went down to the brook this morning to see what I could find, and a little rabbit got frightened of me and jumped into a deep, mushy drift, and I caught him and skinned him and cooked him—hating myself." She faced him with a strange shyness in her eyes. "Anyhow, you needn't go hungry."
The corporal hoisted himself to a sitting posture, suppressing a groan as he stretched his stiff, sore muscles. He reached forward to take the cup, but found himself weaker than he had imagined.
"Here!" said the girl as the hot fluid slopped over his unsteady fingers. She knelt down before him, a faint rose leaf color tinging her cheeks as she did so; and she held the cup for him while he drank. In such manner he contrived to finish a second and third cupful of broth. And the rich, scalding liquid seemed to act as a magic potion. His feeling of lassitude and incompetency departed with the warming of his blood, and all at once it occurred to him that there was no sense in sitting idle, making an invalid of himself.
"We may as well be going," he announced abruptly, the old brisk note of decision returning to his voice.
"Do you think you ought to?" she said with a dubious glance.
"Got to!" Steadying himself with his hand, he cast aside the blanket and stood erect.
"Where do we go?" she asked faintly.
"Up the valley where you left us last fall," he told her, staring off with feigned interest towards the distant mountain ridges. "Colonel Devreaux is waiting for me."